


Ghoulish

by generalatomicsgalleria (charmingotter)



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: F/M, Goodneighbor, M/M, The Railroad
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-05
Updated: 2016-10-04
Packaged: 2018-08-19 15:19:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8213941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/charmingotter/pseuds/generalatomicsgalleria
Summary: A pre-war doctor named Harvey Jones ends up on a trek across the Commonwealth to retrieve an special item that must be given to the Railroad for an old friend





	

Unable to focus Harvey put his book down and looked out over Goodneighbor, ever the watchful man. For Goodneighbor, it had been an astoundingly quiet day. Too hot for crime, he mused. It had been too hot for anything for days now.

At least the wind was blowing though. Two hundred plus years and he still despised the heat. He simply wasn’t suited to it. Even less so after the bombs fell. How simple things had been back then. Air conditioning, he thought. Never thought he’d miss it so much. Now he just had to suffer through the heat.

To battle it now he had every window and door open in the old warehouse that served as his home. He had turned on every fan he had as well. None of it was doing much good if he was honest with himself. It still felt like hell. Looked like it too of course but it looked like that when it was cold too. The wind offered some small relief though. It brought the promise of autumn. The thought was enough to bring a smile to his old weathered face.

He almost missed the stairs creaking under the weight of someone’s feet he had gotten so lost in thought. At one point he’d have thought nothing of the sound. Now, he put a hand on the gun that sat on the table next to him. There were a few people it could be; Sun, his mostly absent roommate, the Mayor, come to look for her, or it could be a patient. But it could also be someone looking for trouble and he had come too far in this world to let his guard down now, even on such a peaceful day.

A couple more steps and the person trudged into his line of sight. His red hair giving away his identity before he even rounded the stairwell and showed his face. Harvey put the gun down. Jack was no threat. Not to him at any rate.

Looking over his glasses at Jack he asked, “Back again?” The man had left him not twenty minutes ago all stitched up and ready to go tackle the troubles of the Commonwealth again. Now, he was bleeding through his shirt.

Jack rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly. “I pulled my stitches,” he said, his freckled cheeks turning as red as his hair.

“Course you did.” Harvey sighed. “Come. Sit. I’ll take care of it.” He pointed to his ‘patient table’, which was just a metal table with a white sheet thrown over it. He had tried a simple hospital bed at one point, but after the first couple times of people bleeding all over the mattress he decided this was a better option. Easier anyhow. Maybe not as comfortable, but that was usually the least of people’s problems.

Jack began digging around in his pockets. “How much?”

“Nothin’, Jack. This one’s on me,” Harvey told him, grabbing his medical bag from the closet. Harvey wondered why he’d even bothered putting it up. Should have known Jack would be back so soon.

Jack snorted, hopping up onto the table. “I won’t let you do this for free.” He held out a handful caps to Harvey. “Let me pay you.”

Harvey tossed his bag down on the table beside Jack, ignoring the man’s outstretched hand. “How many stitches are left?” He asked, looking around in his bag for what he needed.

“Two, I think,” Jack said, finally putting his caps back in his pocket. “And I will repay you for this, one way or another, Jones.”

Harvey ignored chose to ignore that last bit. “I put six in,” Harvey mumbled to himself, trying to push his glasses back into place on what was left of his nose. If he had a cap for every time he wished he still had an entire nose he’d be a very rich man, he thought, struggling to get the glasses in just the right place again.

Once he got his glasses settled he went back to finding his things. “How did this even happen?” He asked, pulling hemostats, scissors, needles, and thread from his bag.

Jack shrugged. “Oh, you know, the usual sorta thing.”

“What kind of ‘usual sorta thing’?”

He shrugged again, not meeting his eye. “I might’ve gotten into fight with some guy on the streets cause he was kicking his dog,” he mumbled, his hands starting to fidget.

Harvey said nothing as he considered this. It was not uncommon for his patients to lie to him. Harvey was sure Jack lied to him on a regular basis. Though the fact remained, this particular tale rang true to him.

Jack continued to fidget, obviously waiting for Harvey to say something about his questionable actions. Threading his needle, he considered what to say carefully. After a moment, he spoke, “What happened to this dog?”

“I dunno,” he said.

Harvey cast his eyes up at the other man. Jack’s face showed nothing, though perhaps that was more telling than if it did. “Did he run off? Did the man take him with him? What happened exactly?” He questioned.

“Yeah, well, it was kind of hard to see what was going on while I was laying in the dirt, trying to figure out how to breath again,” he admitted. Jack shook his head. “I dunno what happened to either of them. I just know that once I could get up they were gone and I was bleeding again.”

“Can’t win ‘em all,” Harvey told him, finishing with the needle.

Jack chuckled. “Yeah, I guess. Just don’t tell anybody I can’t, eh, Doc? It’d ruin my reputation.” He tried to grin, eyeing Harvey’s tools uneasily.

Harvey moved his stool closer to the table so he’d be able to reach the wound. “Take your shirt off and lie down,” he told the other man. “And I don’t believe you actually have a reputation to ruin by the way,” he said, giving Jack a pointed look.

The bloody shirt was tossed onto the floor and Jack leaned back. “Unfortunately,” Jack said very matter of factly, stretching his arm out behind his head, “I do. My fate generally rests upon such reputation.”

Harvey momentarily paused, frowning at the many scars on Jack’s chest. The strangest urge to ask him what on earth he’d been doing to have so many came over him suddenly. Shaking his head, he went back to work, dismissing the thought. It was none of his business, he reminded himself. “Is that so?” he asked, wondering now if his hypothetical reputation had anything to do with those scars.

Cutting and removing what was left of the stitches he surveyed the damage the latest fight had done to his patient. This time it wasn’t so bad honestly, despite the pulled stitches. Jack usually came to him worse than this. Harvey sighed. Blood was dripping down on to the white sheet now. He’d have to change it again.

Jack grunted, flinching when Harvey started redoing the stitches. “It is so,” he said stubbornly, squeezing his eyes shut. “My reputation is actually very important if I want to keep living.” He clenched his fists tighter every time Harvey stuck the needle back through the skin. “And for the moment, I’d like to keep living.”

Harvey just hummed, barely listening now. If Jack would stop squirming he would have been done by now. “Once more,” he mumbled, more to himself than to Jack, as he pushed the needle through one last time before completing the stitches.

“Harvey Jones!” A familiar voice boomed from behind them.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading guys! Any comments or reviews would be greatly appreciated! Also Shout out to [Jeeper_Creepers](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Jeepers_Creepers/pseuds/Jeepers_Creepers) for helping me out a bit with this and just being the most supportive and motivational cupcake ever <3


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